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Cafe Health Analytics also known as collective analysis for collective cafe is an application built on a national de-identified repository of healthcare data from Health Catalyst customers’ EDWs and third party data sources that enables comparative effectiveness, research, and unique powerful machine learning algorithms; with a data feedback loop to participating client sites to affect change at the point of decision making.

Cafe health analytics was built because it had the potential to provide tons of benefits to the healthcare industry. Some of the benefits of CAFE are:

Unique workspace for researchers to glean intelligence from a large cross-institutional dataset

More precise predictive models trained on large data sets and delivered at points of decision making

CAFE health analytics is important because it is a collective analysis and collective analysis makes use of collective intelligence.Collective intelligence allows healthcare analysts and researchers to harness the knowledge and brain power of a community. Knowledge and information is power and sharing knowledge amplify that power.

Tacit knowledge is difficult to share, as it is the unwritten, unspoken and hidden knowledge held by all of us. The capture and use of tacit knowledge through emerging systems of engagement will ultimately contribute to the effectiveness of the extended enterprise. The advancement of technology has made sharing of knowledge and information a lot easier. Now individuals and groups can collectively act more intelligently than they could before. Sharing on social media and social networks, for example, has greatly contributed to the ability to leverage tacit knowledge

Gathering and using knowledge is not all smooth sailing, it comes with its own set of challenges. When companies try to capture this knowledge, they face these challenges but once leveraged, this intelligence allows complete ecosystems to unleash the knowledge, creativity, ideas, and innovation so necessary for future survival. The drivers behind the collective intelligence enabler are:

Collaborations between ecosystems can be quite complicated and it impedes the sharing and diffusion of knowledge. Business networks should work towards continuing to integrate their knowledge system vertically and the complications introduced by knowledge diffusion must be addressed.

Stakeholders are beholden to critical information about the ecosystem and they should be accessed. Employees, partners, and customers (patients) of a healthcare organization all have different knowledge bases about the system that is valuable. A feedback system is one way to access and gather this knowledge. As the number of stakeholders involved in value creation expands, so does information management complexity.

This century has seen a lot of structural changes in riding on the coattails of the information growth. Structures are changing and shifting in profound ways and this is evident in the healthcare industry but also in other industries such as manufacturing as well.

The economy is changing from a manufacturing economy focused on physical production to a service economy based on idea production, knowledge, creativity and design. Along with this shift comes the shrinking of innovation cycles in the global environment and the need for every company to accelerate and broaden the production of ideas.
A recent Forrester Report determined that at least ten times more digital innovators can operate at one-tenth the cost or less, generating at least 100 times more idea power than under traditional disruption. Ideas contribute to the collective intelligence of a community or healthcare organization and this drives investment in mechanisms that enable this ideation.

In addition to this, every healthcare organization that wants to excel must excel at the use of knowledge, and creativity in how the knowledge is used. Excelling in these areas requires an effective way to leverage the broader ecosystem, putting pressure on companies to leverage systems of engagement and the resulting collective intelligence.

In the healthcare industry having competitive advantage is not is intense is other industries. Healthcare organizations do seek to be ahead and have advantages in areas such as quality of care and have the best and most talented personnel.

Companies in other industries seek competitive advantages for a number of reasons, barriers to entry are falling and the competitive environment is growing more intense. With this comes the need to create and sustain competitive advantage through innovation, execution and smarter decision making. To enable this competitive advantage, companies will seek to expand ideation to include a broader community, leverage a broader base of intelligence, and deploy systems of engagement to enable effectiveness.

Speaking of getting high-value personnel for healthcare organizations, due to knowledge sharing, talent is becoming more distributed. Doctors can learn a new technique by reading current medical journals, attending conferences and inviting specialists to share their knowledge. As more work is dispersed, knowledge is further distributed. This diffusion of knowledge further complicates knowledge management efforts and drives the need for the capability that effectively harnesses the intelligence of a broadening ecosystem

Move towards a culture of openness, accountability, transparency, and trust across the ecosystem – as the organizations evolve over the coming decades, openness, transparency and trust form the foundation. When information is so readily available and shared it causes a want for more. Consumers demand transparency expect organizations to share information freely and readily, and This evolution enables open-minded individuals to collaborate, share, and use intelligence across organizational boundaries. The most successful organizations will have leaders that understand this commitment to cultural evolution through information sharing.

Re-imagine old structures. Some structures and system of operation for older organizations are not set-up in ways to enable the new system of information flow function. In addition, current enterprise structures (process, policy, systems, organization design, etc.) that were established in a different time do not effectively support value creation in a connected world. As with each of the other enablers, a critical step in establishing collective intelligence capability is an openness to re-imagine and challenge the status quo.

Healthcare organizations should leverage this collective intelligence to drive business outcomes. Collective knowledge can be instrumental in improving outcome measures. Healthcare organizations can leverage the intelligence flowing through these ecosystems to enable actions, drive better decisions, and ultimately optimize business outcomes. Connecting collective intelligence capability to the analytic platform is a critical enabling step